Nov 30, 2009

Golf, a big business that takes itself too seriously and the press not seriously enough, has a problem: "The traditionally conservative golf media and Tour are, not
surprisingly, skittish about reporting this story...Golf Digest, one of the largest golf publications in the world, has only posted AP
articles and no personal opinions from their columnists on their
website — for good reason, considering they are one of Tiger's sponsors."

The legitimate question of the day is, "Is a 0% funds rate creating the
next financial bubble, and if so, will the Fed and other central banks
raise rates proactively – even in the face of double-digit
unemployment?"

"We will need another 12 months of 4-5% nominal GDP growth before
Bernanke and company dare lift their heads out of the 0% foxhole –
mini-bubbles or not."

Why?

The Fed is trying to reflate the U.S. economy. The process of reflation involves lowering short-term rates to such a painful level that investors are forced or enticed to term out their short-term cash into higher-risk bonds or stocks. Once your cash has recapitalized and revitalized corporate America and homeowners, well, then the Fed will start to be concerned about inflation – not until.

"The cracks in Dubai’s property sector were showing long before last week...The most conservative estimates put the supply of new houses coming onto the market over the next two years at 40,000. According to other estimates, up to 25 per cent of residential units are already empty." At least they've still got the indoor ski mountain.

I'm sure the deep thinkers at the Cato Locke Heartland Enterprise Institute are picking apart these numbers even as you read this post, and writing policy papers pointing out that many of those implicated deserve to be poor anyhow, but still, damn, we are one broke-ass country.

Nov 28, 2009

NYT follows yesterday's article on the ethanol glut with an op-ed against raising ethanol mandates:

Allowing a higher percentage of ethanol in gasoline will not make us
less dependent on such foreign energy sources. It will not help the
environment. It will not lower consumer prices. And it will result in
the poor of the world having less to eat. Instead of raising federal
mandates on ethanol, Congress and the Obama administration should end
them entirely.

Somebody remind me...which state kicks off the presidential primary season, and which state is Obama from?

Overhyped, overbuilt...who woulda thunk it? This guy, who adds: "This is not a garden-variety recession and recovery. It is a recession within a longer-term depression. And while we are in a technical recovery, I believe much of the fundamental problems which triggered this downturn are still there, lurking. The debt troubles at Dubai World bring this point home."

A cynic may suggest they were never as fiscally conservative as they let on. Some have preferred repeating bromides about fiscal conservatism to engaging in the details of cost-cutting. Others, like Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and many Blue Dog Democrats in the House, have seemed mainly interested in securing Medicare dollars for rural areas. Still others — including Joe Lieberman, who represents a state, Connecticut, that is home to many insurance executives — have seemed obsessed with the so-called public insurance option. None of these positions will fix the health care system.

Regardless of your stance on other issues, surely we can agree that Americans who abide by the terms of rental agreements deserve a measure of security.

Hutchins is featured prominently on the web page of the National Independents Movement, which shares an aesthetic with his own site. "George Hutchins has been an N.I.M. Crown Government Officer since the year 1989."

Much discussion here, including some close reading of the site and speculation on the realness of it all.

Nov 24, 2009

That design critique, while accurate, doesn't begin to capture the magic of the site, with its call for "Spanish" voters to join him in opposing the "Gay Male Homosexuals" who brought down the British Empire, and its comparison of the Obamas to characters on Sanford and Son, and, well, you really must see it for yourself.

"Florida real estate" was synonymous with "scam" by the 1920s, I think. We are not always a nation of fast learners.

[N]egative equity "is an outstanding risk hanging over the mortgage
market," said Mark Fleming, chief economist of First American Core
Logic. "It lowers homeowners' mobility because they can't sell, even if
they want to move to get a new job."

What the people who are flipping out about the treatment of Palin
should be asking themselves is what it means when it's not just jerks
like us but everybody piling on against Palin. For those of
you who can't connect the dots, I’ll tell you what it means. It means
she’s been cut loose. It means that all five of the families have given
the okay to this hit job, including even the mainstream Republican
leaders. You teabaggers are in the process of being marginalized by
your own ostensible party leaders in exactly the same way the anti-war
crowd was abandoned by the Democratic party elders in the earlier part
of this decade. Like the antiwar left, you have been deemed a threat to
your own party’s "winnability."

The establishment press serves the establishment, duh. There are problems with Taibbi's logic -- the moral equivalence of opposing a bad war and supporting a bad candidate chief among them -- but the part about Dean and Kerry and the herdlike media is important to understand.

Nov 23, 2009

"The Online Media Legal Network (OMLN) is a network of law firms, law school clinics, in-house counsel, and individual lawyers throughout the United States willing to provide pro bono legal assistance to qualifying online journalism ventures and other digital media creators."

Reader M got a rate increase on her latest bill from Time Warner Cable:

As I received no prior notice, I called FCC, who told me they do not regulate Time Warner, I should call the Franchising Authority listed on the bill. I called City of Greensboro, who is listed on the bill as the FA, who told me they are no longer the FA, it is the state.

Time Warner tells me the FCC is who I should call with this concern. They also told me they sent a letter advising of a price increase. They may have sent it, but I never received it, though they are sending a copy at my request. (I only have internet with TW.)

My complaint is not the 12+% price increase, it is with the fact that I got no notification, and subsequently got the run-around, and I think they are required to give a 30 day notice of price increases.

Letters get lost. The real problem this illustrates is the lack of accountability with which Time Warner operates.

The outgoing City Council vowed action on this issue, but little or nothing seems to have happened. Maybe the new Council will recognize the seriousness of the problem.

Church-state separation is a common metaphor in journalism, where it refers to the wall between editorial and publishing concerns. I wonder how that worked at the Washington Times, which allegedly got more than half its operating budget directly from Rev. Moon's church.

Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today's low rates by
exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government
faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of
overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.

The debt is worrisome (and, unfortunately, largely necessary), but is the United State really facing the default risk of an overextended home-buyer? I don't think so.

Maybe the Times should have run a disclaimer about the writer's personal expertise on the subject.

"People generally have this idea that the wisdom of crowds is a pixie
dust that you sprinkle on a system and magical things happen," says
Aniket Kittur, an assistant professor of human-computer interaction at
Carnegie Mellon University who has studied Wikipedia and other large
online community projects.

Hmm. Maybe people who believe in pixie dust, even in its metaphorical form, are not the ones we want analyzing important projects?

In this episode, Matlocke uses his folksy wisdom to control the federal judiciary.

Hagan had just been elected to the Senate. That Saturday morning,
Clifford walked into her living room and told her that the 15-seat 4th
Circuit Court of Appeals had just one North Carolina member, a
Republican, and that it needed more.

I'd set the exemption a little higher than the $2 million proposed here, but the larger ideas work pretty well.

There is a big difference between wealth acquired through hard work and
creativity and wealth bestowed as an accident of birth, and Congress
should not be afraid to make this distinction. Keep in mind that
inherited wealth is completely free of income taxes. Thus, while a
person who earns $200,000 by working must contribute more than $50,000
in federal taxes, a person who inherits $200,000, or even $200 million,
pays no income taxes at all.

Nov 20, 2009

What I actually went to China to do: look serious during the simultaneous translation while waiting to use that mic in my hand. Only conference I've attended where speakers got boutonnières, and my speaker pass read "Distinguished Guest."

I was grateful for "Damn the Torpedoes" when it came out, both for the music and the message that rock was not yet dead, and I'd put this on my list of best-ever videos, and Benmont Tench is a great name, and in general I just like Tom Petty without really worrying about his place in the critical pantheon -- his image, at least, is antipantheonistic.

But "Better Than Bruce?" is a decent enough barroom argument, although I think that after one has teased out all the meanings of "better" it's a pretty clear "no" in this case.

Just a bad plan all the way 'round: "Arnholt said that banning the media would not only be illegal, but it
would not solve concerns about a political incident because so many
people have personal blogs, post video to YouTube and pass information
and pictures on social Web sites."

Nov 18, 2009

More on the rise of outside-in technology, from Google CIO Ben Fried: "My bet was that some of these fast movers will sit on a rocket to the C-suite. Some of the people from that generation are going to be the CIO's bosses. And they'll say, 'What do you do? I've never used any of your services or respected any of them.'"